The present invention relates generally to equipment utilized and operations performed in conjunction with a subterranean well and, in an embodiment described herein, more particularly provides a swellable packer construction.
The benefits of using swellable seal materials in well packers are well known. For example, typical swellable seal materials can conform to irregular well surfaces (such as corroded or damaged casing, or uncased wellbores, etc.) and can be expanded radially outward without use of complex and potentially failure-prone downhole mechanisms.
Prior methods of constructing swellable well packers typically include molding or otherwise bonding the swellable material onto a tubular base pipe. Differently configured base pipes are used for different situations, for example, where different tensile strengths, different threaded connections, different materials, etc. are required.
Unfortunately, these prior methods of constructing swellable packers require that many different configurations be manufactured, inventoried, appropriately distributed, etc. This increases the cost of providing suitable swellable packers to the industry, and reduces the convenience of using swellable packers.
Therefore, it may be seen that improvements are needed in the art of swellable packer construction.